


troubadours and saints

by orphan_account



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She broke into Hope's room, tried on all her clothes and read every note</p>
            </blockquote>





	troubadours and saints

“What the fuck, Kelley?”

Shit. She's caught. Hope's staring at her, one hand on the doorknob, halfway between the room and the hallway. The picture in her hands falls to the floor.

“You weren't supposed to be back yet.”

“What are you doing in my room?” Kelley's drunk. Drunker than she's ever been in front of Hope, and so she lets the door swing shut so they can have this conversation in private. She's wearing her clothes as well, she notes. 

“I wanted to- I wanted to see-” She trails off. “Barnie let me in before she left.”

~

There's more than one bottle already in the mini fridge, but Kelley holds out until Tobin leaves, avoiding dinner with the excuse of a headache. As soon as the door shuts, Kelley has the bottle open, and within ten minutes, the wine's gone. Still, she takes a second, hoping to go from mildly-buzzed to not-in-love-anymore. When the second bottle is half empty, the rational part of Kelley's brain kicks in, tells her that this is ridiculous, but then she remembers Abby, and the note, and the hug that went on for too long and ended with a kiss on the cheek. The jealousy flares up inside her again and the bottle gets finished.

They've been broken up (if you can actually be broken up without a relationship in the first place) for a month and a half, but Kelley still looks at Hope and wants to kiss her, and sometimes she catches Hope looking back like she wants it too.

It doesn't happen, and she supposes she should be grateful for that.

What does happen is Kelley stumbling down the hallway of the hotel to the room Hope's sharing with Barnie, in the hope that maybe she's not gone down to dinner yet. 

It's a terrible idea, but that's not going to stop her.

She finds Barnie there, and it takes all of one sentence to convince her to let Kelley in. “I lent a book to Hope and I need it. Can I get it back?” It's a terrible excuse, and Barnie can probably smell the alcohol on her breath, but she doesn't acknowledge it, and lets her in anyway.

It strikes her that she's not dressed for the occasion—if you could call it an occasion—in just a tank top and shorts. She's cold, so she steals a hoodie from Hope's closet (her favourite, but she tries to forget about the other times she wore it). She grabs a pair of sweatpants too, both of which are too big on her, but she lets the sleeves of the hoodie slide past her hands, and the bottom of the pants trail along the carpet. It makes her feel smaller, more like a child, so she feels less guilty for being there. Maybe Hope would think the same thing.

Hope's wallet is lying on the desk in the room. She picks it up and leafs through it, to the picture she knows Hope keeps tucked away at the very back.

She traces her finger around her own face, then Hope's in the picture. She still remembers the night it was taken, in Hope's apartment, just the two of them, the night before Hope's birthday. Kelley had taken a selfie, Hope had jumped in last-minute to wrap her arms around Kelley's waist and plant a sloppy kiss to her cheek. It burns in her chest like it was yesterday, when she remembers the feeling of Hope's lips against hers on that night. She'd felt more than just fireworks; she'd felt bombs go off and their whole dynamic shift, and for a night she believed in magic. 

That was so long ago, Kelley doesn't even look like herself. She can't handle it anymore, so she stuffs it away and throws down the wallet, reaching for the letter lying beside it on the desk.

~

“She shouldn't have. You shouldn't be here.” Hope's eyes drift to the piece of paper by Kelley's feet. “You read Abby's letter.” Kelley nods. “Kelley, that was none of your business.” Hope's calm, too calm, Kelley thinks, and it's scaring her even more. 

“Sorry. Are you guys dating?”

“Is that what this is? You're jealous?”

~

There was a time in Kelley's relationship with Hope when they were happy. When Hope would say she loved her and Kelley would say it back and then they'd lie together on the sofa, and Kelley would wish for Hope to never take back what she said. That time's long gone. They'd fought, and Hope had ended it, and Kelley had cried and only now is she considering the possibility of a third party. Abby.

The answers she's looking for were never going to come from the bottom of a bottle, but the bottle gave her liquid courage to get this far, and the answers were going to come from this letter.

She reads it through three times before she fully understands it. 

She's looking for anything, really, anything that she could use to accuse Abby of ruining them, but she comes up with nothing.

~

“Did you find anything in that letter to tell you that?” Kelley shakes her head, at the same time both relieved and ashamed. “You need to stop Kelley. We're over.”

“Why, Hope? You always told me that, but you never told me why.”

It hits Hope in that moment, hearing the hundreds of questions in Kelley's voice, hearing the hurt, that Kelley always thought it was about her. She never knew how much better she deserved. Kelley's drunk, and that's what Hope's really counting on, that she'll forget this all by the morning. It's that naivety that makes her say it out loud.

“I'm a selfish piece of shit who could never give you what you really need.”

“I loved you.”

“You deserve better Kelley. I never let you know me properly, and you deserve better than that.”

“I don't believe you.”

~

She throws the letter down again, and notices something in Hope's wallet. She didn't stuff the picture back in properly, and she can see a corner poking out now. There's writing on it, so she pulls it out again.

_KO – The only one who ever understood me. 07-29-12_

Before she can fully process it, the door opens, and Hope is right there.

~

“It's the truth.”

“Is it?” Kelley picks up the picture and hands it to Hope. “I believe this is yours. And the writing on the back is yours. What the fuck happened to us, Hope?”

Hope doesn't speak again, and Kelley's feeling the tears creeping up on her, so she leaves.

“I'll go.” She steps outside and closes the door. She's no more than ten steps down the hallway, when she hears Alex's laugh, followed by some shushing (unmistakeably Tobin), and knows exactly what's happening. She remembers when she was like that with Hope, and she falls apart.

Her knees weaken and give way under her without warning, so she's lying, drunk in the hallway, sobbing.

Hope hears the damn break from inside her hotel room. She's close to tears herself, with the one picture she allowed herself to keep, as a reminder that she could be loved, even if she didn't deserve it. She hears the dull thud of a body hitting the carpet, and the sound of the sobs she came to know so well, before everything happened. She should fight it, she knows she should, but her feet carry her to the sound in a way she's never been able to prevent.

Before she knows it she's holding Kelley, clutching her to her chest with no intention of letting go.

“Kelley? Do you remember that night, when I woke you up and told you that I love you?” Kelley nods against her chest, and Hope's voice is starting to fail her, so she lets the rest out in a barely-there whisper, because hopefully Kelley's too drunk to remember this in the morning.

“Well I still do.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you kept up with the chronology in that then you deserve a medal good job.


End file.
